Carole Waller glass art for outdoors

I work closely with private clients, garden designers, landscape architects and exhibition organisers, to create temporary or permanent garden and landscape interventions and installations.

I studied painting at Canterbury and continued for an MA in fine Art Textiles (Fibers) at Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit. I now work with light, cloth, colour and glass, and have exhibited in many garden and outdoor sculpture exhibitons since 2005. I have also completed numerous commissions in private and public settings in schools, public parks and private gardens.

International Festival of the Garden at Westonbirt Arboretum

My first glass art for outdoors project was for the International Festival of the Garden and the Forestry Commission at Westonbirt Arboretum in Gloucestershire. The resulting 6 huge panels inspired by the magnificent trees in the Arboretum, rose out the ground like standing stones – but in GLASS!

The brief was to create a pathfinding artwork in the landscape – visible from afar but not intrusive. The combination of materials in my work sets up a magical dialogue between the fragility of the fine membrane of semi transparent cloth with its delicate painting, and the monumentality of thick, toughened glass.

The colours of my installations change from morning to evening, and with the weather and the seasons. Rain creates a myriad of moving droplets on the surface, and mist and snow see it change again. The glass appears and disappears in the landscape, depending on the angle from which it is seen – it’s mystical.

High specification glass: an ideal material for outdoor artwork

The resin which laminates the glass I use has UV protection as well as resistance to extremes of temperature. This allows the painted cloth colour resistance, and so provides colour in the garden and landscape all year round – and in all climates. The glass is toughened and also laminated, providing the highest technical specifications for safety. My glass art for outdoors usually takes the form of panels that are buried in the ground into steel plinths. These in turn can be bolted to blocks of poured concrete to stabilise them, if necessary.

I have worked with Sue Adcock on two gardens for Chelsea Flower Show. The first was the  ‘Monet garden’ –  in which a huge fin of laminated glass was suspended over a still round pond. The following year I created ‘Colonnade’ – a group of upright glass art panels for outdoors, with figurative images – initially set around a table in a courtyard garden. The images remind us of Italian courtyards and spaces of quiet in the sunshine.

The ‘Colonnade’ glass installation has been reshown in hospital gardens, exhibition spaces, and in many garden exhibitions. It was finally sold as individual pieces for private collections.

I work closely with garden designers and private clients, developing ideas and solutions that incorporate my unique glass art for outdoors into large and small spaces.

In a landscape setting my installations magically appear and disappear when seen from distance and at different angles. In a smaller garden, glass art panels can create a powerful focal point of vibrant glowing colour, or subtle luminous colour. Technically they withstand extremes of temperature, are resistant to UV, and are generally buried in the ground to keep them safe!

Further examples of my glass art for outdoors are found in a variety of public arts projects completed in permanent installations around the UK. Courtyard designs, hospital garden projects, art centres and hotels have all commissioned site specific installations or art glass.

Photos: Jason Ingram and Chris Daw